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The Working Group would continue to find more permanent parking spaces for goods vehicles. The Hong Kong Planning Standards and Guidelines, which was revised in October last year, would increase the provision of light goods vehicles parking spaces in new public housing estates by about 10 per cent, and goods vehicle parking spaces in new industrial developments by about 60 per cent.

The Working Group had also proposed new sites for inclusion in the land sales programme for the next three years for multi-purpose developments with multi-storey carparks that would include provision of goods vehicle parking spaces.

In the meantime, the Working Group would continue to search for more short- term tenancy sites and on-street parking spaces.

The Working Group would submit another report to the TAC in about 12 months with a review of the situation at the time.

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Hong Kong becomes the world's 7th largest trading entity

The Director-General of Trade, Mr Alan Lai, welcomed today (Tuesday) that Hong Kong had ascended in the world ranking of trade to become the seventh largest trading entity in merchandise trade in 1996. Hong Kong had been the eighth largest trading entity since 1993.

The ranking was calculated on the basis of figures released in a report, "Overview of World Trade in 1996 and the Outlook for 1997", published by the WTO earlier this month.

As regards commercial services trade, Hong Kong had also moved one place up to become the world's 10th largest commercial services trading entity in 1995.

"Hong Kong's ascendancy on the world trade league table demonstrates further the benefits of Hong Kong's strict adherence to the free trade principles," said Mr Lai.

"Hong Kong is a staunch supporter of free trade. We will continue to practise this policy and actively participate in the multilateral and regional fora to pursue the further liberalisation in trade in goods and services," he added.

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